At the time (1963 - 1978), looking at writing as a process rather than product seemed to be a magic bullet. And it did spark a change in emphasis, shifting us away from surface features and towards how things get done. It sparked a flurry of empirical research into how students and expert wrote and theory building on the nature of the process(es) of composing. But the complex, recursive process became linear in the classroom as it was made into a formula to suit a curriculum and a course pattern. Process was reduced to recipe. Observations on how people composed became curricular prescriptions. Doomed from the start.

Process study and research tries to revitaize invention by bringing a consideration of how into comp theory - and the focus is on description rather than prescription: how do people compose rather than how ought they compose?

Splits out into how do experts v students compose? which opens to theorizing.

High level of generalization of process. More cheerleading and encouraging teachers to step out than anything else

For instance, what is Murray grounding his ideas in? He doesn't cite anyone. We can assume he's working off his own considered work but he's not acknowledging that limitation. Where does he get those numbers? And on what does he base his assertions about exploring for truth?

The article now looks pretty naive. Murry's article is a picture of what becomes the Romantic-Expressivist position in comp theory.

With Murray, it was about the discovery of voice, self, truth: expressivist. That's what teaching is for. With Emig, it's about learning in general - about English, or placing the role of writing in teaching subjects.

As she writes at the end, her essay is a first effort to make a case for writing as a mode - means, or manner - of learning.

Draws on psych, phil, neuro and chemical psychlogy. Vygotsky, Moffett - an other scholar of writing - and the essay is heavily end noted. She also points to a new kind of study in writing.

What she gives us are a list of features where writing and learning intersect, and a chart of her argument. Stated this way, others can build on her first pass, and teachers can test and refine assertions in classrooms.

Some of her ideas become givens - mostly in the chart.

BUT
her approach is arhetorical. That is, not grounded in choices we make while writing, not discussing the nature of that web of connections. Tries for a universal again - even recoils at language and knowledge are personal constructs.

(1979 from research in 1975-6)
Bringing scientific method to the ideas of process

Perl states the importance of her work on the last section. She's very aware that she's creating knowledge.

states the need for finer ways of capturing the processes so we can spot patterns, the need to look at non-average writers; and a need for a replicable and significant method for rendering process - a rendering that brings out useful patterns, patterns we can build on further. She's one of the first to bring social scientific method to researching how people compose. That empirical method is considered more valid than anecdotal observation, intuition, prescriptions (use an outline to organize) outside the small enclave of literature studies. She uses the conventional headings and method of research study rhetorically to gain validation. Uses speak-aloud protocols. Her study leads her to be able to construct a couple of hypotheses about process, p 34. These hypotheses can now be tested and refined.

Her results and method become part of our givens.

This is also what phd candidates do. This is her diss study.

Spends section on miscue analysis and demonstrating how errors occur and can persist. That error is not really oversight or laziness. We see the same reading in in other studies. She takes the time to detail some of the kinds of problems that arise.

Last section, she points up some implications for us.

We now have to contend with what she finds in our consideration of writing and writers and in our generalizations about writing for pedagogy.

Looking at smaller aspect of process than Perl. Again, we see textbook case of how knowledge get built in a discipline. Opening move is to read, see a gap, then work in the gap. Revision.

Sommers seems to have more of an agenda than Perl. She wants to correct the direction practice has taken.

She's also working against the reduction of process to linear and staged, which how it had been taught. Prestige means never going back to pressuring. That would be nonlinear, developmentally backwards. That is, good writers are efficient and get the right ideas in the right words on the first pass.

Sommers presents far less evidence to substantiate her claims characterizing writers and how they think and act. Less detail here, so we have to trust what she found in these 9 x n papers. But the genre of the research study generally guarantees her evidence is good, and her study is repeatable.

Contrast inexperienced v experienced to get to the idea that

experienced writers revise as part of the process of discovering meaning - owing to a dissonance between what one represents internally and how that is represented externally. And that process of discovering meaning destroys the linear model: writing can't develop like a line because each addition demands a reordering of the whole: meaning is a network, not a string. Students aim to bring their external representation into confluence with a predefined meaning -

seeking to bring the representation into confluence with a predefined meaning is Themewriting.

Student v Experienced
This is Sommers's classification of the subjects. It is an appropriate distinction as the categories are mutually exclusive and developmentally progressive. That is, once a student moves into the expert realm, she no longer writes as a student.

How do any or some or these change your sense of composing? how does that sense stay the same?
On what do you ground your sense of process? hearsay? direct report? protocols?
How do you know the earth isn't flat?